The Shortest Way to Hades by Sarah Caudwell Read Free Book Online Page A

it was rather an exciting moment. I heard a sort of thudding sound behind me, and looked round and saw her lying there on the pavement in front of the flats. I could see at once she was dead. I began screaming and a policeman came.”
    The Coroner said there was nothing to suggest that Miss Robinson had taken her life deliberately. It would have been natural for her to lean over the balcony for a better view of the race and the evidence all pointed to her having accidentally overbalanced. Her balance might have been affected by the wine she had drunk at lunch: it was not excessive, but perhaps more than she was used to.
    The jury returned a verdict of misadventure.
    “I see,” I said. “Poor Deirdre.”
    “And Julia thinks it’s murder,” said Timothy. “She’s really very worried. She seems to feel, you see—there are Cantrip and Ragwort. I’d better get another bottle.”
    Resigned to the obligations consequent on three years’ seniority, Timothy rose and moved towards the bar. Cantrip and Ragwort joined me in the circle of candlelight: I admired, as always when I see them together, the pleasing contrast between Cantrip’s black hair and black eyes and the demure autumnal coloring of Ragwort.
    “Hello, Hilary,” said Cantrip, “we thought we’d find you here. Offer free grub and free booze, we said, and we’d have you here in two shakes of a mortarboard.”
    “What Cantrip means is,” said Ragwort, “that we were confident that an appeal from Timothy for your assistance would not go unheeded.”
    “I don’t yet know,” I said, “why my assistance should be required. All I have heard so far is that Deirdre Robinson fell from a roof on the afternoon of the Boat Race, and Julia thinks it’s murder.”
    “Precisely so,” said Ragwort. “And is greatly troubled by it.”
    “Flapping like a moonstruck moorhen,” said Cantrip, “and going on about Sir Thomas More and making everyone’s life a misery.”
    That Julia in a state of agitation would resemble such a bird as Cantrip had mentioned I could readily believe; the relevance of Sir Thomas More I would, I suppose, in due course discover; but why, some two months after the event, there should suddenly be this anxiety as to the cause of Deirdre’s death—
    “Because of the letter,” said Cantrip. “Hasn’t Timothy told you?”
    There are days on which Julia does not open letters. She is overcome, as I understand it, by a sort of superstitious dread, in which she is persuaded that letters bode her no good: they will be from the Gas Board, and demand money; or from the Inland Revenue, and demand accounts; or from some much valued friend, and demand an answer. If a letter arrives on such a day as this, she does not open it but puts it carefully away, to be dealt with when she feels stronger. After that, I had always supposed, it is never seen again.
    “That, certainly,” said Timothy, returning with the wine, “is the normal course of events. You will remember, however, that there are also periods of reform, during which we are promised a new, improved and more organized Julia. They generally don’t last long enough to matter much. But they always begin, of course, with a tidying of papers: that’s how she came across this.” He again opened his briefcase.
    The letter was amateurishly typed, though on paper of excellent quality; the postmark on the envelope which had contained it was four days earlier than the date of the Boat Race.
    Fiske House, Belgrave Place, Tuesday.
    Dear Miss Larwood,
    I have found out something interesting and I want you to tell me what to do about it. Can you meet me at seven on Saturday at that place we had dinner at? Ring me at home if you can’t make it, but don’t leave any messages with anyone.
    Yours sincerely, Deirdre Robinson
    Not the most graceful of letters, from a young woman asking a favor of a comparative stranger; but that might perhaps be shyness. I was not surprised by the letter’s effect on